Who’s In Charge Here?

With the recent elections in Iceland and upcoming changes in leadership, I thought it would be good to review vocabulary related to political posts that you might encounter while reading Icelandic news. The past week or so has been filled with meetings between Sigmund Davíð Gunnlaugsson, chairman of the Progressive Party and leaders of the other parties which won seats in parliament. It seems most likely that a coalition government will be formed between his party and the Independence Party, headed by Bjarni Benediktsson. There still has been no announcement of the formation of a new government though, and one is not expected before the weekend according to RÚV:

“A meeting on the formation of a new government between Sigmund Davíð Gunnlaugsson, chairman of the Progressive Party, and Bjarni Benediktsson, chairman of the Independence Party, still stood at the top of the news. According to news sources they met in Biskupstungur in Reykholt, where Sigmund Davíð’s father-in-law has a house.”

“In a conversation with news services Sigmund Davíð’s assistant Jóhannes Þór Skúlason said that talks were still progressing well and had achieved some partial results, but it wasn’t possible to disclose anything further at this stage.”

This passage is a great example of the use of the subjunctive mood in reported speech. The words gengju and væri are past subjunctive forms of the verbs ganga and vera.

A partial list follows. Try breaking down the prefixes to learn where the words derive their meaning from. In the above case, utan is outside or external, while ríki is state or government. So the result is foreign 🙂